I've sent a small donation but quite honestly this is happening at every horse sale. Very young ponies and foals they are generally referred to as "bits of rubbish" because they are not ready to ride and not the cream of the blood lines for showing. The foals you would need to look after for another two years before you can start to ride them, but during this time you would have to do lots of handling eg. you would need to be able to touch them all over as well as lead then and pick their feet up. All essential things for grooming vetting and feet trimming. So if you wanted a cheap pony for your child this would not be suitable.

The older animals were really quite old to start to ride, it is usual to do this at the age of 3-4 years. The only 5 years old was entire ( a stallion)'Having said all the reasons why anyone should not get one- I take my hat off to those who do. x

On the issue of animals for research "The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather, 'Can they suffer?'" Jeremy Bentham

We are trying to purchase extra land and as soon as we do I shall be asking if we can adopt,we have three assorted ponies {all rescue} already,we have a shetland stallion and hes probably the most "together" of the three and we our 2nd cob was so nervous we couldnt get near him for three months,so we are used to rescue horses that havent been handled.Thank you for posting this as we hear of so many cases of abuse of horses and we are lucky enough to have space for them.